"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
–Ida B. Wells
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - As Black History Month comes to a close, Action News 5 looked back on one of the darkest events in Shelby County--the 1917 lynching of Ell Persons, a Black man murdered for a crime historians say he likely did not commit.
The Memphis Landmarks Commission endorsed an application Thursday, Dec. 22, to make the 1917 Ell Persons lynching site part of the National Register of Historic Places.
The Tennessee Historical Commission will consider the designation next month, followed by the National Park Service.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — The site of a brutal mob attack more than a century ago in Memphis could become the first lynching site in the country listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a local historian says.
It was a case that echoed all the way to Washington and New York City.